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hyacinthetic · 4 years ago

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[p5/FOREVERDUMPED WIP] you should know i’m temporary.

shuake loveless-flavoured fantasy au. dumping this here in its unpolished glory because my god, i’ve got to focus, i am so close to having an actual finished multichapter on the internet, GET THEE BEHIND ME, BEGUILING NEW-OLD FANDOMS.

"I'm sorry," the Academy boy says. His gloves whisper, gaunt under the silence. "Someone should have come for you much sooner. Sacrifices aren't permitted to meet the fighters before the day of selection, but—I trusted in the system. I should have known better."

There's a story in his words, an invitation, a point like the barb of a fish-hook. Akira keeps watching. The cold flush of his lips. His bowed and shining head. The arch of his outstretched hands, neat as porcelain, neat as paint, lit by the pixellated glow of the chamber like a projection of mercy.

"Do you," the boy says, "still remember your name?"

He's drowning when his sacrifice comes.

Hands haul him out of the dark water. Impact, sensation, impact. Light spatters his vision. The cold carves through him with a stroke that should split him open to bone. He's all limbs, all hurt; his heartbeat's thrashing in his ribs, veins roaring, whole body singing like iron under flame—

"What have you done—?"

He twists. Hits the floor. The fall punches through him. His body judders, coughing, gasping; his shoulder pulses in dying flares. Through the tiles, he can feel the simmer of footsteps, outrage, a voice cleaving down like a season.

"—didn't know that the Academy had resorted to human offerings in order to win the war."

"Partner-select Akechi. There is no need to shout. Arrangements for your fighter are as you—"

"My fighter. Please. Let me assure you: if he'd been mine from the beginning, it never would have come to this. Do you need further instruction? Well, then. Help him up, you trepanned tool."

A new voice; the snarl of it remakes the air. Everything before it was darkness; everything in its wake is a star. Steps flurry around him. He's wrenched to his knees. A servitor's cold hand glosses his cheek and throat, taking his pulse like an instrument.

When Akira opens his eyes, there's a boy crouched before him.

"Are you all right?"

His throat works. He is looking at an Academy creature: red-eyed and sleek, dressed in the crisp black suit of a senior student, all arrow-flight movements and a body as slight as mystery. Akira shifts. Water's still coiling around his wrists, dripping manacles. Its taste clumps in his teeth like resin, clinging. He holds the stranger's gaze, and waits.

"Do you," the boy says, "still remember your name?"

Water flickers in his ears: a whisper, an itch. For a moment, he thinks of saying so; but the faceless servitors have stopped across the floor, props scattered across the stage of this new clockwork quiet.

Everything's waiting on them.

His knuckles grind tile. Cold traces the curves of his bones. "Kurusu Akira," he says.

"Kurusu. Akira." The name cracks between them like a shell. "I'm afraid we don't have time for much more, as far as pleasantries go. My name is Akechi Goro. You're going to be my fighter, if you'll have me. The bond-title that I offer is Chainless. Do you accept it?"

Akira bites back a sound—tastes salt, adrenaline, a thickening bruise, the echoes of a snarl. There are moments that aren't scenes—moments that exist as a cluster of heartbeats and coincidences. This is not one of them. The question has a constellation of answers, but only one's been scripted for him.

He understands, then: no one in this room is dying. There's a reason for that.

His pulse churns. His damp hair prickles his skin. Breath after breath rasps between them in a slow, shackling line.

"Do I have a choice?" Akira says, and feels his sacrifice stiffen. A grin splits his mouth, stark as a stage-light.

By night, the Academy's deserted.

He follows Akechi across the grounds. Their footsteps overlap like whispers, trailing through courtyards and grainy corridors. The night lies icy and still; the halls have been scratched down to cold constellations. Only the wards are awake: a thrum in the shadows, a sense of something teeming along the spidering grey walkways, fishbone stitches and silken eyes.

"Don't test your boundaries too soon," Akechi says, two steps ahead. "Memory implants aren't uncommon in the final preparations before the fighter's awakened. If you have them, they may take some time to come to rest."

May. Akira opens his mouth, then stops. His reflection keeps going, head slung low, body set in steering lines, a ghost in the vindictaglass windows. "I know this place. I've been here before."

"I see," Akechi says. There's still a smile in his voice. "Do you remember the name of the room where they were keeping you?"

Memory jolts through his spine. He wants to answer the question—feels wanting with the clarity of hunger, honey glittering on his tongue. Akira tugs the lock between his brows. "The battle-chamber," he says. "It's where bonded pairs go for battle training at the Academy during their final year."

In memory, the room opens with a sense of endless vertigo. His throat turns against the taste of preservatives and spellwater. He remembers sickly light on flagstones; needle-slick silhouettes; the testing hollows, narrow as coffins, crossed with cage-bars. Nothing like the chamber that he'd left, moving towards the doors with Akechi's steady grip bracing him up. Rows of bodies suspended in a nameless, timeless dream.

"Hold on," Akira says, and feels a pang when Akechi stops. The heft of his own voice seems unreal. "What's happening outside?"

"You mean in the provinces. If it's news you're interested in, we can call a bell-runner in the morning."

His voice shivers down the hall, a wind before rain. The lamp-flames bow; the wards murmur a warning chorus. Akira ignores them. "There's been a war going for the last seventy years," he says, hooking fingers in a pocket. "Did you fix it while I was out?"

"Unfortunately not. The war goes on." But the question seems to settle something. Akechi's shoulders sink. He moves forward. "But if you have particular people that you're concerned about, I can arrange to have a few messages sent by bell in our name."

"Messages," Akira says; Akechi's inflection is clear as a spotlight. "Seniors sure get a lot of privileges at the Academy."

"The fortunate ones do."

"Is that all you are."

Akechi tilts his head. "I've done my best to earn my place," he says. "In terms of skill, I'm a little worse than my betters, and a little better than everyone else. Labels are difficult to apply beyond that. Drawn spellwork tends to be more precise in its effect, but spoken spells offer speed and opportunity for improvisation. Some students choose a style, then make up for its inherent flaws with their choice of school—the Kanshori system offers the opportunity for grounded shorthand spells, and there's a theory being passed around the Kanshoshi scholastic community in terms of honing verbal accuracy…"

It's clear that he could go until morning. His voice is a trained curve, answers swaying without root or end. Akira closes his eyes. Beneath his eyelids, he sees the gleam of a fish-hook again: bait and shaped steel, drifting over an unruly tide. There's a conversation that they should be having, a script as old as wanting; but he's already given the wrong answer once.

Inside the Academy walls, he knows, language is a blade and a mirror. Each word carries a double-meaning. A true student of the arts would say fallible, and mean trap.

He's fallible. It's unforgivable.

Akira picks at his damp trousers. "Can you show me?" he says.

Silence flinches down Akechi's stilled back. "It's fairly late to be practising spells."

"I don't see anywhere to sleep yet."

"We're nearly at the dorms, Kurusu. Are you truly so impatient? Or is this an issue with your endurance?"

There's an easy retort to that—but it's meant to be easy. He swallows, and feels the pull of Akechi's voice scathing across skin. "Whether or not I'm your fighter," Akira says instead. "You're gonna have to show me sometime."

One by one, every echo withers between them.

Akechi turns. His gaze is a phalanx, armoured in light and fury, a spell to core the heart out of anything it touches. "Your hand, then," he says. "Please."

Something crackles through him—livid, starving, magnetised. He doesn't mean to move. It's the only thing that he means. Akira stirs, and Akechi catches his hand before it strays too far. His fingertips lock against bone; he yanks and Akira pitches towards him, clean as a breaking fever.

A gloved hand catches his arm.

Akechi's brows have snapped down; his lips are parted, reddening. Akira breathes in. His lungs are heavy, cloying with the sweetness of cologne and worked wool. The heat of a breath drawn between them like a blade.

Akechi's grip clenches. Without looking, he sketches a line across Akira's palm: delicate, intricate, a circle that tangles then unravels again. "An elementary restraint," he says, as Akira shifts on his heels. "You'll have to tell me if I go too far."

He's moving in a faultless rhythm, mapping patterns across Akira's skin. Loops into lilies, a sine-wave, a tide of stars, a name on the cusp of sound. His heartbeat's thinning in his teeth. He knows this touch, this sense of gravity; his body's unraveling beneath the airless weight of it. If he shuts his eyes, he could follow the memory down.

All he has to do's shut his eyes.

Akira blinks. The walls sway around him, shimmering with hungry lights. "Huh," he says, and hears himself as if through spellwater. "It's taking a while."

"I did warn you," Akechi says. "In theory, it's possible for the presence of a fighter to stabilise the sacrifice's focus, and minimise the weaknesses of their spellwork. Unfortunately, I've yet to see those results for myself."

His voice's unraveling. Akira tenses, or means to—but he's gone. The spell's eating through his vision. Everything's blackening, fading, lost. All that's left is a memory: shape after shape flashing where his pulse had lain. A gamepiece, a constellation, the shudder of a ship's anchor tearing loose from its home shore. A spell like winter: terror, longing, grief crystallising into every breath.

He knows this ache. He knows its name.

Akira's shoulders flex. Through the cold, he reaches up. His hand hooks over Akechi's glove. Light prisms beneath his eyelids.

The spell shatters.

Everything comes flooding back: grey floors, white sills, shadows long as drowning. The lamps leap in their sconces; the hallways glow like bone. Only Akechi's still looking at him, fox-eyed, wordless, mouth clipped sharp as steel. His grip digs in. Akira feels every point of his fingers like a heartbeat.

"Better keep watching, then," Akira says.

Akechi lives in a modest space—pale walls with skeletal furniture, mendasilk sheets and a scholar's table, every surface as glossy as a shogi piece. The windows frame a spectral winter, towers and stripped black trees prickling through the white like ancient bone. From the threshold, it's almost impossible to see where the snow ends and the walls begin.

"Taking my bond-title," Akechi says, as Akira's stare swings from corner to corner, "means that you're assigned to my room by default. We won't be able to occupy separate beds until we've graduated."

"Do you cast a lot of spells in your sleep?"

"Supposedly it's a matter of adjustment," Akechi says as Akira crosses the floor. "Fighters aren't always comfortable with the thaumaturgical weight of the bond at first. Keeping the sacrifice close to the fighter seems to increase the rate of improvement."

He sinks onto the bed. His gaze drifts back to Akechi, still perched by the doorway. "Well," Akira says, rolling his head back. "Where do you want me?"

The distance beats between them, a spell on the tip of the tongue.

"It's strange for you," Akechi says. "Isn't it. I didn't know that a fighter could remember so much of their history after awakening."

"I don't need sympathy."

"No." It cracks in the air, sparks from flint; Akechi's mouth curls with a slow, brimming light. "I see that. Still, there must be something I can do to make you comfortable."

Akira looks at him: tense and coal-eyed, body drawn against the door like the string of a bow. But Akira isn't a sacrifice, and so he knows: there are no words that'll get him what he wants.

He waits.

In a certain light, silence is its own kind of spellwork. Akechi's frame tightens under the weight of it. His hands drop; his lashes sweep down. Step by step, Akechi trails over to him. His fingers slide under Akira's jaw; Akira tilts his head up with the touch.

"You're my sacrifice," he says, low, to the flicker in Akechi's shuttered eyes. "You tell me."

It's a guess, a goad, the kind of answer that's no answer at all. Whatever the Academy'd meant to make of him, they hadn't etched their commands deep enough. Sacrifice and fighter are only words, shrapnel that could scatter with a sigh. He doesn't owe anything to Akechi Goro; he has that lesson branded across his skin.

But it's Akechi who moves first. His hand drops. He turns with a gesture. "You'll find a change of clothes in the first drawer," he says over a shoulder, "when you're ready. Treat my rooms as your own."

Akira touches his own cheek. The ghost of pressure beats through his fingertips.

"Thanks," he says to the empty air.

He dresses in the baths. Sleeve by sleeve, the shirt settles over him, sure as fate. Like something measured and made for him.

Akira goes out. The lamps are drooping down to silhouettes. In the dark, there's only the floor, the bed, the curve of Akechi's spine under thin sheets, sketched in pearling light. He doesn't make a sound as Akira crawls in; but the last of the candle-flames dip, and then there's only night.

"You're taking all of this very well," Akechi says.

There's an edge to his voice under the shadows, loose and jagged as a puzzle-piece. Someone else might be able to feel out its place—but not him. Akira tugs the pillow. "You haven't killed me yet."

"I wouldn't."

"Right. You don't kill."

A laugh feathers across his lips. "I've been waiting for my fighter since the day I turned fifteen," Akechi says, with drowsy sweetness. "Much like any other sacrifice, I suppose."

Akira shifts. "Do you ever stop?"

"Hm. Talking?"

Akira closes his eyes. Visions are racing through every nerve: Akechi's fingers on the curve of Akira's palm. The last bitter throb of a spell, collapsing. All the words he's holding aloft between them in the dark. "No," Akira says.

The quiet sways in the air.

"Even if you trust nothing else in this place," Akechi says at last, "trust that you will never be an acceptable loss to me."

There's no good answer to that.

But he's awake long after the echoes of Akechi's husky murmuring melt into dreams. One night in, and he knows too much. The hard slope of Akechi's cheek, the star of his hand over the pillow, the haze of his body heat. Every line of him's a memory, a regret, a signal-fire burning on some promised shore.

Soundless, unseeing, Akira reaches out. His palm drapes over Akechi's knuckles; their fingers interleave. He knows better than this. Of course he knows. But it's this shape that follows him into dreaming: hand over hand, bodies curled like reflections. Fitted together, simple as a heartbeat.

It's different, walking the Academy as a bonded fighter.

For the first week, Akira does nothing but wander. He walks the circuit of its battlements; he counts the click of his footsteps through a deserted hall. Whatever scholars had laid the foundation for the Academy, their parchment hopes had been overwritten a long time ago, caged in towers, in stone worked with vindictasteel, in sigils scrawled across the bronze of the archive domes. The Academy's a garden for sacrifices now, coaxing them to bow, to bloom, to bleed themselves into spellwork. Anything else that lives in it's an afterthought, numberless as soil or light. He can speak, and be answered; he can move without drawing a single glance.

Invisible, knowledgeable, alive. It's a good combination.

They go on, apart and together. In the mornings, Akechi vanishes to study. Akira loiters in the bone-pale stairs, listening. Every powerful institution thrives on gossip; the Academy's no exception. Passing students argue over spell translations, new territories fallen to the Council's Own, the nature of the lingering sentience in the faceless servitors. They whisper over old flames and new romances, the sour young wines delivered to the Academy as a yearly tithe.

They tell stories about Akechi Goro, too.

Akechi Goro's an orphan. He's the secret heir of a Councilman, sent out under a false name to protect him. In his first year, he shattered an instructor's shields with a single ballista spell. He once foiled an assassination plot on the Academy's chancellor. No student's marks have ever come close to his since he entered the school. The head of the Demiurgic Council broke off treaty negotiations with the Suzhen Isles last year for the chance to offer him the school's first-rank prize in the spring ceremonies.

"They say he joined the Academy to keep his promise to his childhood love! Once he's covered in glory, worthy of our republic, he'll go back home and be married." "Well, I heard that he's a compendium project—like the servitors, you know, only sane. He comes from a long line of spellworkers. His whole family planted memories of their specialisations in his head before he ever set foot on Academy grounds." "And I know for a fact that he's a long-lost descendant of the old Emperor, smuggled out before the war, come to restore the old order—"

It's gossip, a nest of mysteries and fantasies without root or colour to them; but Akira collects them all the same.

He wants to know it all.

"You think he's going to trade out his bond-title soon? It's not like he's gonna get anywhere as is. Everybody knows the Council hasn't promoted a Chainless pair outta the advisory unit in, what, thirty years?" "Who knows how Chainless thinks. But I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. Half the senior class's titled and qualified for partner-select by now. There can't be much choice left in the archives." "Oh, be fair! Chainless's much too noble to turn against his allies." "He better not stay that noble once he graduates. You ever see him in a match? Even Kingless'd be hard-pressed to touch him. Put those two together, and they could end the whole war." "Well, if he's interested in taking someone else's name, he'll have to handle it while he's at school. Stripping the bond-title from another student's nothing compared to what they'd do to him for violating the thaumaturgical autonomy of one of the Council's Own." "Execution, you mean?" A round of laughter, ringing slim as porcelain. "Please. As if Kingless would ever let the Council waste a sacrifice. Worst come to worst—all they'll do's execute the fighter."

The days wing through. Lean winter starves down to spring. In the quiet, Akira listens, and waits.

"Oh. Welcome home."

Classes aren't over for the day; but partners-select aren't bound by the schedules of ordinary students. Now and then, he forgets that—Akechi splits his hours between the Winter Archive and the parlour rooms of the Academy; he comes back to the room late in the night, smelling of parchment and sweet, wasting smoke. But this isn't Akechi the scholar, or Akechi the society boy. His shoulders are braced hard against his chair. Sunset's tangling through his hair—a fever's halo, fire glimmering in the hollow of his throat, as easy as a touch.

Akira presses the door shut; its click snaps through the walls like a shot. "Thanks, honey," he says. "Long day?"

"If you needed a more extensive tour of the Academy," Akechi says, "you could have let me know."

"I'm not getting lost."

"I assumed that much," Akechi says as Akira heads towards him. "I have some faith in your abilities."

Spring's settling over the Academy, but not in any hurry. The bones of the school have barely started to thaw; its grounds are a riot of stinging winds and crumbling, icy drifts, a landscape bruised in stone and snow. Kneeling at the foot of the desk, Akira feels through the carpet for the points where the warming alchemy run thickest. "You're not afraid I'll get lost," he says. "So what are you afraid I'm going to find?"

A hand brushes his cheek. Akira turns, and lets Akechi tilt up his chin.

"You have a skill for drawing trouble," Akechi says, iron-eyed, with a voice that's all veneer. "In case you've missed it, I'd prefer not to see you hurt."

Akira closes fingers around his wrist. A wire of tension thrums into his grip, then goes still. "A lot of people in the school're talking about your bond-title," he says.

"They're uneasy," Akechi says. "They have a right to be. After all, my progress hasn't been following the standard timeline."

With Akechi, the best hook is always silence. Akira shifts in place, and waits.

"Twenty years ago," Akechi says, with a thin twist to his mouth, "the Kingless sacrifice simplified the Academy's steps for graduation. Every partner-select chooses a fighter at the beginning of the year. Generally speaking, fighters will manifest the marks of the bond-title somewhere on their bodies within a few months of the pact. It's then recorded in the Academy archives with all of its pertinent details. Whether the mark was ink, scarring, or ethereal. If it was located in approximately the same area as the sacrifice's mark. The predecessors who've held the title, and any pattern in their achievements. It's meant to guarantee that we'll have as a grace period—providing the bonded pairs with a chance to prepare for their initiation trial into the Council's Own."

"It's spring now," Akira says.

"And," says Akechi, "here you are."

He hasn't looked away. In the rusting light, his gaze is stark as coal. A look like a question—a look like burning. Akira swallows. "What would happen," he says, "if a sacrifice tried to take a bond-title someone else already had?"

The hand withdraws; Akechi settles in his chair. "That's precisely what the archives are intended to prevent. Every student's expected to have researched their bond-title, and to have it recorded within a few weeks of beginning their final year. But," he adds, all rue and unfaltering gold, "to answer your actual question: the original pair would notice over time. There's a sense of violation—a displacement. Paranoia, recklessness, and instability aren't unheard of—in both the usurper as well as the original claimant. Your title is your destiny. A destiny can't be shared."

"And your destiny's being 'Chainless'."

It hasn't been a season yet since he'd swallowed blood and spellwater, and bowed his head to a new name. But some things need less than a season. Akechi leans on a knuckle. The flex of his throat rolls through Akira's nerves like sparks. "I wonder," Akechi says, "what brought that question to your mind."

"You know why," Akira says. "Everyone sees what you can do. But no one who's taken the name Chainless has been sent out into the field for decades."

The room rings: empty, empty.

"Every sacrifice has secrets," Akechi says at last. His fingers skim the arch of a glove, restless as a spell. "It's our nature. I understand that mine may feel somewhat heavier than most. And if you can't live with that knowledge, I'm afraid the bond between us won't last for very long."

Less than a season together, Akira thinks—but he knows Akechi Goro. The uneasy prickle of his lashes when he's dreaming. The fall and rise of his voice working through a new translation. His hands at work, sweeping through line after vicious, perfect line: engraving patterns, chemical patterns, patterns taking shape like—

"That's not much of a threat," Akira says.

Akechi laughs. "Is that how it sounded?" he says—husky, startled. "Well, then. Let me be more clear. Fighters are used as amplifiers and vessels. No fighter should be able to overturn a sacrifice's spellwork on his own. You're a comet in a closed system. Whoever holds you at the end of next year will rewrite the story of the republic." His knuckle digs against his mouth; his shadow trembles like the fringe of a flame. "You understand, don't you. The bond-title hasn't manifested for you yet. You still have some time."

The pattern unravels. The world shivers into place.

I wasn't aware that a fighter could remember so much of their history after awakening, he'd said.

There must be something I can do to make you comfortable.

I've been waiting for my fighter since the day I turned fifteen.

Akira blinks, sharp and clearing. His heartbeat's pounding between his ribs, gutting, roaring, electric as a storm. "I thought a title was destiny," he says.

"If destiny doesn't bend to our choices," Akechi says, "I don't see how it's worth anything to us."

There's a mystery about Akechi Goro. It's written into his skills and mannerisms, scrawled like poison down to his roots. How a boy who entertains visitors in the Academy parlors every week could have drawn so few allies over four years. The way his voice turns with every word, clarity to knives, cynicism to certainty. What it is about Chainless that had drawn him—this boy bound by every title and grace that the Academy could grant him.

How he could have waited years for his fighter, and offer to give him up at a word.

Akira leans onto a knee. His hand clasps Akechi's; he ignores its stutter beneath his palm.

You will never be an acceptable loss to me.

"So," Akira says. "I'm choosing now."

Akechi stares at him; but he's learned by now. The flex of his hand; the way his fingers curl against Akira's palm. The triumphant surge of his smile, unsteady but pristine, like a blade drawn from the forge. Every touch a heartbeat, rising.

#real procrastination and fake prose

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thatsaweirdwaytospellundead · 4 years ago

Text

Mankai’s 5th Mixed Troupe Play: Yin Yang Midnight 1/ 3

This story takes place during the Heian era-- The extravagant culture and lifestyles of the wealthy elite are coming to an end as murmurings of a mysterious Onryo begin to spread through the court.

Then suddenly, an unexplained plague begins to sweep through the streets of the city. The epidemic moves swiftly through the royal court until the emperor himself falls ill.

Characters

Sakyo as Abe no Seimei

Azuma as Kou

Citron as Geppaku

Guy as Hisui

Explanation of terms

This story is heavily based on traditional Japanese religious practices and thus some Japanese terms will be left to preserve the meaning of the story. I have also included links to wikipedia artists explaining the terms if you would like to read more.

Heian Period: Japanese era that lasted between 794 - 1185 AD.

Onmyouji: A person who practices “Onmyoudo”, a spiritual practice common in Japan during the Heian Period. Onmyouji were responsible for keeping track of calendars, performing rituals, etc.

Onmyouji Bureau: An official department in the royal court made up of Onmyouji who served the emperor.

Onryo: A vengeful spirit that returns after death to cause chaos.

Shikigami: A spirit companion that is summoned by an Onmyouji to help with tasks. They can possess animals and use magic, however it takes a lot of strength from the Onmyouji to control their Shikigami properly.

Due to the length of this play, I will be posting it in 3 parts

[ Part 1 ] [ Part 2 ] [ Part 3 ]

Onmyouji Chief

Seimei, you heard about the disease that is spreading through the city, right?

Seimei

I have.

Onmyouji Chief

Well there’s only one other person who knows this but...

The Emperor has fallen ill.

Seimei

--!

Onmyouji Chief

But if this got out to the rest of the imperial court, it would definitely incite a bunch of useless panic.

There would probably be a power struggle if this news got out that the emperor is in critical condition.

So, let’s pray he recovers from this.

You should go perform a purification ritual immediately.

Seimei

Understood.

Seimei

Cleanse the heart, cleanse the body

Kou

Leaving all the grunt work to you again? Tch.. Typical.

Despite your efforts, you know they are just looking for someone to scapegoat, right?

Seimei

Don’t say such things, Kou!

Kou

Yah, yah, whatever.

Seimei

Kou

..... Something’s coming.

Seimei

Make haste, follow my command!

Kou

Too bad, he got away.

Seimei

..... What’s the meaning of this?

Kou

Were you even listening to me? This is all just busy work.

Seimei

The Emperor’s life is in danger.

We must hurry!

Onmyouji Chief

It’s an Onyro you say? Don’t be ridiculous.

There are no gaps in the boundary of the imperial court.

If that were the case it would mean one of our fellow onmyouji has turned on the great emperor himself.

Completely impossible.

Seimei

Well...

Onmyouji Chief

Seimei.

Was this your plan all along? To put the blame on some so-called Onryo as an excuse for why you couldn’t complete the purification ritual?

No matter how hard you try, you’re still as conceited as ever.

Seimei

-- I wasn’t trying to make excuses for--

Onmyouji Chief

Then step down!

Let someone else handle the ritual.

Seimei

...

The Onmyouji Bureau tasks Abeno Seimei in charge of holding the purification ceremony in order to cure the emperor. However, during the ritual, Seimei encounters a troubling sign that convinces him that the plague sweeping through the imperial court is the work of an onryo. Seimei then sets out to find a way to exterminate the spirit from the court.

Seimei brings his findings to the head of the Onmyouji Chief and is met with laughter. Without the support of the Onmyouji Bureau, Seimei struggles to continue his investigation.

Kou

You don’t need those shitheads. They’re gonna realise they were wrong sooner or later.

Seimei

I doubt it.

If we don’t take action now the damage is only going to get worse.

Kou

But those higher-ups at the Onmyouji Bureau got their eyes on you so there’s no way you can just move around freely.

Seimei

But Kou....

I can’t just sit back and watch!

Kou

You work too hard. Hope you don’t regret it.

Seimei

I don’t care about all that nonsense, just tell me what you found.

Kou

I told you already. The barrier surrounding the imperial court is pretty strong, so strong I doubt even we could break through. An onryo could never slip through.

Seimei

.... That’s just like what the Onmyouji Chief said... Right?

Geppaku

Master Seimei.

Seimei

-- Geppaku? You came back!?

Geppaku

I got here yesterday. Sorry I didn’t write you sooner.

Seimei

I see, long time no see!

Geppaku

You look happy as ever, I’m glad!

Seimei

Same for you, Geppaku.

You look just as healthy as I imagined.

Geppaku

Thank you so much!

Even far from the city I caught wind of some rumors.

Seimei

Guess even I couldn’t stop that.

Geppaku

What’s with that blank expression? Did something happen?

Seimei

You didn’t happen to hear about a mysterious plague sweeping through the city, did you?

Geppaku

Yes, I heard no one knows where it came from.

Seimei

I’m afraid it is the work of an onryo.

Sadly I just couldn’t catch it myself....

Geppaku

Perhaps maybe I could lend you a hand?

Seimei

Really?

Geppaku

I don’t really know if I could do much, but I’ll do whatever I can to help, please let me try.

Seimei

What a lifesaver!

With you at my side, Geppaku, there is nothing we can’t do!

-- Kou.

Kou

You called?

Seimei

Please enlighten Geppaku on the curse of the vengeful spirit.

Kou

Ehh, I’m kinda not feeling it right now.

Seimei

Excuse me, this is not a question of whether you want to do it or not.

Kou

Fine, whatever.

Geppaku

Hehe, what a quirky shikigami you got there.

Seimei

I don’t know how I put up with him, really.

Geppaku

On the flip side, he definitely seems pretty strong!

That’s the Seimei I know!

Seimei

You too, Geppaku.

How goes your training? You have to tell me all about it later.

Geppaku

I can’t say I am as nearly as adept as you, Master Seimei.

Seimei

What are you saying? Surely by now our skill levels are almost even.

Seimei is at a loss of what to do when an old student of his, Geppaku, appears. Geppaku is a foreign boy and because of that, despite his strength, was unable to enter the ranks of the Onmyouji. Geppaku returns to Seimei after he had left the city to continue his training.

Geppaku volunteers to help Seimei and from there the two begin their investigation into the cause of the epidemic. However, Seimei’s shikigami, Kou, does not seem to like Geppaku much and acts coldly toward him. Seimei does not seem to notice this, however. Towards the end of their research, the pair hear of another happening outside of the town that could be related to the so-called onryo. The duo make haste to the scene.

Seimei

So this is where all that commotion about that onryo was coming from?

Kou

This is right about where the first case broke out.

And also around the same time of day.

Seimei

I don’t really know if there’s any relation, but it’s definitely something to look into.

Villager

’s there somethin’ I can help ya with?

Seimei

You didn’t happen to hear anything about an onryo sighting here, have you?

Villager

Ah well ya see...

I was pretttyyy drunk one night,

‘nd I saw it riiiight here. A big ol’ ball ‘o fire flew up and I tripped at this ‘ere stone and whaddya know a will-o-wisp came flyin’ out!

It had some kinda creepy glow.

I got quite a shock and nearly poo’d my pants.

I dun remember a thin’ after dat though.

Seimei

A rock, huh... Seems like such a childish prank for a ghost...

It makes me kinda worried.

I have never heard of anything like this before, let’s look it up, Kou.

Kou

Hey hey, isn’t that something a little heavy for a Shikigami?

Seimei hears about a sighting of the spirit from a villager who encountered it during a drunken evening. Intrigued by the story, Seimei tasks Kou to see if there are any similar stories from inside the city.

After looking into it, Seimei realises this spirit is not just a simple prankster, but in fact a strong force that could even penetrate the safeguards placed around the city’s borders.

To be continued... Read part 2 here!

#a3 #a3! translation #エースリー #play:yin yang midnight #c:play #a3:azuma #a3:sakyo #a3:guy #a3:citron

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doctorjeremyxvandamme · 4 years ago

Text

“Yesterday, upon the stair, / I met a man who wasn't t h e r e! / He wasn't there again today. / Oh how I wish he'd go away!”

Below the cut, you can find Jeremy’s basic info, key story points, full bio, and a handful of possible connections, although I am open to most plots! Triggers include death mentions, blood mentions, and a handful of horror elements. Please do feel free to reach out if I can provide context without mention of those topics.

basics

Name: Dr. Jeremy van Damme

Gender/Pronouns: Cismale | He/Him

Date of Birth: January 22, 1981

Age: 39

Hometown: Jersey City, NJ

Length of time in Crescent Harbor: 5 Years

Neighborhood: Hemlock Docks

Occupation: Professor of Anthropology at Crescent College

Faceclaim: Matthias Schoenaerts

key points

An only child, the son of a Belgian-born painter of some renown, but primarily among art types with an interest in niche work

Has a doctorate in anthropology from New York University and now teaches the discipline at Crescent College. Completed his undergrad education in Washington

Devotes most of his research to modern folklore, urban legends, and what he calls ritualistic play: games like Bloody Mary or Charlie Charlie, the latest variation of Juego de la Lapicera, meant to summon something, communicate with something, or achieve specific ends through strict adherence to pre-determined rules or conditions

A history buff. Knows much about the origins of Crescent Harbor and is now actively involved in historical preservation efforts. His interests encompass the periods both prior to and following the actual founding of the town.

Something of a pack-rat. Collects oddities and antiques and allows visitors to poke around his overcrowded house.

full bio (tw: death, blood, horror elements)

If he angled his neck just right, face pressed against the glass, held there by tiny, marker-covered hands, he could just barely see the monster from his bedroom window. The gangling, wide-eyed thing, all teeth and blackened pupils, was caught in an eternal snarl by the glint of the corner street lamp (which had been broken for some time and blinked erratically every few minutes). The light has stay on because the light keeps it there, he would think. So long as the light stays on, it has to stay there and cannot come here. For as long as the boy could remember, though, this massive graffiti creature, the handiwork of some unknown artist or another, had been spray-painted there, overseeing its domain from the red brick facade of an already defunct paper packaging warehouse. And it certainly had not escaped yet. But this particular piece of street art had long frightened the young Jeremy van Damme, who would spend his nights watching it from the safety of his heightened perch.

At that time, he lived with his father (a native of Flanders and painter of some niche surrealist renown) and mother (a full-time college dean and part-time muse to her artiste husband) in a tall brown apartment building that swayed with the wind. The groaning of the foundation, the creaking of the pipes, and the unpleasant damp sweetness, an almost bloody smell, that occasionally wafted out an uncovered vent after a storm, instilled in the boy an early sense of fantastic terror. More often than not, Jeremy van Damme was afraid. At the age of six, he discovered in a forgotten photo album a picture of himself he could not recall taking. And there, he abruptly decided some other Jeremy, a doppelganger or double or mimic, not only existed, but was waiting for the opportunity to strike and swallow him whole. At the age of seven, he got it into his head that a family of venomous lizards had taken up residence in the basement washing machine; he could hear them hissing if he listened closely. And at the age of eight, the death of the elderly woman down the hall gave birth to a new series of existential horrors, of the terrible uncertainty of the afterlife, of restless ghosts, and of white-haired specters that stalked hallways by night in search of little boys to do whatever it is ghosts do.

Nevertheless, the apartment was not vacant for long, and in the weeks that followed, Jeremy struck up a new friendship with a girl his age who had moved into the building with her family. And with how cheery they had painted the place, one could almost forget what happened to poor old Mrs. Hansen there. It was through this new companion, however, that Jeremy himself, albeit wide-eyed and screaming, was introduced to the sort of ritualistic play that would eventually guide his career. With nothing but a pack of stolen matches and the misguided goal of “putting the spirit to rest,” the pair of them locked themselves in her bathroom to chant into the mirror, spin in circles, and search for faces in the glass. And while they never found them, these games did instill in the young Jeremy a new sense of bravery and morbid curiosity. After all, if a ghost could be banished away by something as simple as blowing out a match, maybe they were not so frightening after all.

Still, he had always been curious. His mother was, after all, a career academic, and to that end, Jeremy had little hope of genuinely shirking his homework. He did well in school and read often. Small and eager to be helpful, he was even, in some ways, a natural teacher’s pet, eager to spend more time among the adults than the playground bullies. Eventually, Jeremy attended a nearby “all boys” Catholic high school, and while the AV Club was already dying by that time, he and a few friends began borrowing their camera equipment to “record psychic phenomena,” which largely consisted of them trying to unsuccessfully move rubber balls with their minds.

At sixteen, however, one of the boys got his own car, and the unlikely group was able to finally take part in a bit of local legend that involved circling an abandoned house several times, honking one’s horn, and then flashing one’s headlights. The result was the ghost of “Clarice” appearing in an upper story window to chase the intruders away. Every time they did this ritual, someone in the vehicle would shout that they had seen her (although it was never more than one person at a time). Following one such excursion, one boy disappeared from school with the flu for a week, and there was, at least, a successful rumor he had been spirited away. That was sort of fun.

Upon graduating, near but not quite at the top of his class, Jeremy ultimately attended the University of Washington, eager to spread his wings to the West Coast although Stanford had rejected him. While he began his higher education as a History major, he eventually shifted his focus to cultural anthropology, in which he earned his Bachelor’s degree. Graduate School, a Master’s degree, and a Doctorate from New York University eventually followed, and Jeremy began focusing his field of study more specifically on the role of folklore and legend in the modern world. His first and only full-length book, a small academic piece, entitled Creating Clarice: An Anthropological Case Study on the Invention of a Ghost, sprung to life when he, upon digging through an academic database, discovered the phantom woman he had tried so vehemently to conjure as a teenager had never actually existed.

Combining local interviews, in-depth real estate research, historical records, and a dive into the roots of ritualistic children’s games themselves, he tried, with varying levels of success, to trace the story to its source and frame it in the context of the community that had created it. This research, while mostly published for classroom use, did eventually earn him a position at Crescent College, where he still teaches today.

In his five years in town, Jeremy has since become something of an undisputed expert in local history, collecting trivia in the same way others might collect stamps. That said, Jeremy remains, to this day, a collector in the most traditional sense. His small home, an old building near the docks, has its charms and is known to be full of oddities, antiques, and other things that have caught the owner’s fancy. Most are of local interest, and Jeremy has rather seriously involved himself in town preservation efforts.

possible connections

The Student - Jeremy is a professor at Crescent College and teaches a variety of anthropology courses for all skill levels. This person is either a former or current student. Perhaps Jeremy mentors them, or perhaps they were an eternal thorn in his side.

The Curious - Jeremy collects all sorts of odd objects he finds. From 19th century tea sets, to old letters and photographs, to “haunted” mirrors and dolls, he welcomes this person regularly to poke around the antiques and maybe even goes shopping with them.

The Adventurous - Jeremy’s primary areas of expertise are modern folklore and ritualistic play. He and this person team up to test out the latest spooky games and legends, from trying to summon up a mirror ghost or see if they can get someone from beyond the grave talk with them through a disconnected telephone.

The Historian - Jeremy is well-versed in the history of the town and its founding families. Perhaps this person wants or needs to learn more about some obscure local topic, and the professor is here to help.

#crescent:intro #intro #about #bio #tw: death #tw: blood

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solivar · 5 years ago

Text

WIP Ghost Stories On Route 66

In which there is an unexpected and troubling revelation.

“Team Tokki, report.”

“On station, sorry for the delay.” Hana replied a nerve-wracking ten minutes later. “Took us a minute to get all our cables in order but Kozy Kot Motor Inn Basecamp is now online.”

The topographic holomap hanging over the dining room table rippled gently as she proved it, pulsing their location in the scrubby desert flatlands between Mesa Prieta and the ruins of Albuquerque, turning their basecamp icon electric pink-and-green.

“In an amusing sidenote,” Hana continued on breezily, “You know those MiBs -- the TALON guys? Their base may be in Albuquerque Sunport but they’ve got mobile units all over the place in the immediate vicinity and some kind of stationary observation post up on the mesa itself. So yes this is me formally blaming my tardiness on avoiding the notice of scary goons who may or may not be employees of the federal government.”

“Mesa Prieta is an archaeological preserve -- it has been for decades, the petroglyphs there are thousands of years old.” Ana, seated at the opposite end of the table with stacks of airtight herb containers, a mortar and pestle, and a digital scale, observed carefully, pausing in her work. “Ownership yielded back to the Federated Southwest Tribal Government after the Crisis.”

“Meaning?” Hanzo asked, inclining a questioning brow.

“Meaning,” Ana gave the contents of her pestle another thoughtful turn, “that either the FST is acting in direct cooperation with TALON or else their actual employers kissed considerable quantities of ass to access that site for reasons other than advancing the cause of cultural preservation.”

Hanzo blinked at her. “That feels extraordinarily bad.”

“It is what it is, my young friend. Until we have better intel, we can only take matters as they come.” She spooned the contents of her pestle into a little tin container.

“I’m not so sure I like Team Tokki’s proximity to a potentially hostile unknown quantity,” Hot Vampire Jack’s tone was significantly less philosophical. “Maybe you should relocate?”

“Their base doesn’t directly overlook ours -- it’s on the far northern point of the mesa, closer to the Chamisa Wilderness Area than to us.” Jesse replied, calm and even. “We can set a drone on stealth observation if you want, but hauling off and moving again might get us seen by one of their mobile units. They’re putting up those pylon things they’ve got on the UNM campus all over out here.”

“I tried getting a look at one of those the other day but campus security waved me off.” Hana added, aggrieved.

“Whatever else they are, they’ve got a pretty hefty sensor and communications package on them -- I can see their output on our own passive monitors.” Lucio added, and the map rippled as he pushed data, added clusters of red-white-black pinpricks representing the pylons’ locations, easily a few dozen spread across the desert basin between Albuquerque and the mesa, many of them concentrated just above the Red Line along old Route 40. “I can try hacking one of their transceiver modules and skimming the data to see what they’re monitoring but that might attract some attention if they’ve got any kind of intrusion detection capabilities onboard.”

“No unnecessary risks. The pylons likely aren’t going anywhere and they’re extraneous to our own mission.” Terrifying Smoke Gabe rasped, his voice on the comms a weirdly metallic echo. “We can always try that if we can’t get intelligence from other sources.”

“Speaking of which,” Zenyatta interjected smoothly, “Team Tattoo reporting perimeter secure at Four Daughters Basecamp -- we are about to begin deploying our sensor and visual observation drones and begin transmitting.”

“El Malpais Basecamp likewise secure and ready to begin deployment.” Jamie added. “Team Helicopter Parents on perimeter patrol.”

“God, I hate that name,” Jack muttered.

“Who gave the lecture about appropriate comm discipline last night?” Gabe asked sweetly.

“Oh, shut up.”

Actual comm discipline immediately dissolved in jokes and back-and-forth smacktalk, a release of tension that even Jack recognized as necessary before any real work could get done, especially since they were waiting for Team Tokki to get up to speed. Hanzo, recognizing at as well, went and fetched tea and cakes and fussy little finger sandwiches for himself and Ana and, eventually, Reinhardt when he came in off his own perimeter patrol with the members of the pack left on guard duty. She accepted the cup he poured and the plate he delivered with a gracious smile, setting aside her work for the moment, while in the background nearly everyone they loved pretended not to be afraid.

Four days they’d been in the field -- four days of hunting the monster haunting him, four nights of sleeping rough, fanning out from Cerrillos in a gradually expanding search pattern enabled by Jesse’s practical maintenance of multiple gasoline-powered vehicles and Jamie’s purpose-built technology. Hana had dropped her presentation and then bagged the rest of her classes to assist in the physical construction of the drones, displaying a level of mechanical skill that Hanzo at least had never suspected. (“When I was a kid, my cousins and my friend Dae-hyun and I built hovertech for competition before I got into gaming -- seriously, aniki, it’s like falling off a bike, you never really forget once you know how to do it.”) Genji and Lucio had done likewise with the programming, following Jamie and Roadie’s careful instructions, working late into the night on stress-testing up until the day before their departure. Hanzo, relegated to a support role, had helped prepare the supplies and the vehicles for departure, packing MATILDA and the largest of Jesse’s off-road capable Jeeps with military surplus rations and bottled water, three fully stocked first aid kits, the heavily warded four-season tents and camping gear going with Team Helicopter Parents and Team Tokki, and extra warm clothing for everyone. He forced cardigans and sweatshirts on all of them at breakfast the morning they departed, a meal he crawled out of Jesse’s warm embrace to make for them and to which he returned before he allowed them to leave.

Jesse had taken his face between his hands, his kiss sweet and soft, and Hanzo had exercised enormous restraint by making only a few rude gestures at his brother and friends as they whistled and shouted suggestions and encouragements ranging from the mildly obscene to the outright pornographic. Jesse’s husky laughter had warmed him almost more than the kiss as he drew them together and murmured against his ear, “I’ll bring Hana and Lu back safe and sound, I promise, and Roadie won’t let anything happen to Genji and Zen.”

“I know.” Hanzo replied, soft and low against his shoulder. “I just wish...I wish I could do more.”

“You’ll have plenty to do when we find this thing. For now, you’re our lifeline. Don’t forget that.” Jesse pressed a last kiss to his forehead. “We’ll be back before you know it, darlin’. Never fear.”

But fear he did, despite Jesse’s assurances, despite his knowledge of all their skill and ability and competence, because he also knew the cruelty and viciousness and above all else cunning of the thing that they hunted, a cunning that had concealed what he had become from their entire clan, from the sister raised at his side, from the Dragon of the South Wind himself. That concealed him now, still, even as they found the telltale traces of his passage through the world, marked on the holomap in a particularly vile shade of bilious yellow, twisting tracks that appeared and disappeared without apparent pattern, growing gradually denser as the search teams moved west. Fear moved him to carry an inflatable camping mattress down to the dining room, where the communications nerve center was set up by virtue of adequate work-and-table space, and built a nest where he slept, light and restless, alert to the slightest twitch of sound on the comms, the tiniest hint of distress, which mostly came in the form of bodies shifting in their sleep and a terrifyingly vast assortment of snores.

“Drones airborne and headed to optimal scan radius,” Hana reported. “You want me to send one of our spares up to keep an eye on the MiBs?”

“Couldn’t hurt to gather a little intel at this stage of the proceedings.” Jesse opined.

“It could if your drone is detected.” Terrifying Smoke Gabe pointed out. “If you send one up, I recommend passive visual observation only.”

“Doable. Lu, you wanna handle that while I get these puppies where they need to go?” A clattering of equipment on the line as Hana and Lucio moved about in their working shelter.

“Gotcha. Temporarily disabling the drone’s sensor package just to be on the safe side.” Lucio came on the line for the first time that day. “You want me to stream footage back to HQ?”

Hanzo glanced at Ana who nodded slightly and murmured, “If they can detect our drone sensor data streams, a video stream will hardly make matters worse, and if they cannot, we will have fresh information of our own.”

“True.” Hanzo replied as his stomach tried gamely to twist itself into a Lemarchand cube of pure dread. “Go ahead, Lucio.” He clicked his own comm off and looked back to Ana, meditatively sipping her tea. “If they -- if TALON -- detects our data streams, could they trace them here, to Cerrillos?”

“Theoretically? Yes. In practice, Jack and Gabriel and Jesse have all exerted considerable effort to make this place as difficult to find as possible for outsiders.” Ana smiled dryly. “And, in any case, they may be the least of our concerns at this juncture.”

“Point.” Hanzo muttered and clicked the comm back on, applying himself to his own tea in an effort to wring some calm out of his digestive tract.

“Team Tokki’s drones on station, optimal positioning.” Hana sang.

“Team Helicopter Parents, ready to begin scanning.” Jamie replied.

“Team Tattoo, likewise prepared.” Zen added tranquilly.

All three Basecamp icons flashed and Hanzo set the countdown timer. “Ten second timer.”

At ten, the holomap blossomed as the drones’ sensor packages and associated data streams came online, populating it with a picture of local reality that overlaid and intertwined with the topography in ways that would make a cartographer’s eyes bleed. In the corner, a secondary pane opened with Lucio’s camera drone feed as it climbed out of basecamp, view panning out across the remains of the Kozy Kot Motor Inn and its eight identical “log cabin” cottages plus the motel office, set around an inner courtyard that had once contained picnic tables and grills and now held two four-season tents linked by a vestibule, a camp sanitary structure, and a warmed, weatherproof work tent, where they also ate their meals. As Hanzo watched, Jesse made is way between two of the cottages and looked up, waved for the camera as Lucio panned and zoomed away, over the cracked and crumbling remnants of a paved road, through the remains of the little tourist town that had sprung up around the motel, as fully abandoned as it was, and into the desert beyond.

There the ground was rucked up and rugged, split by arroyos and tumbled spits of dark, jagged stone, blanketed in tough, autumn-browned grasses and scrubby, wind-tortured trees and shrubs, elevation rising steadily until the drone was climbing vertically along the wall of the mesa. The top of the mesa itself was so flat the TALON installation was clearly visible miles off, a crescent of four dun-colored prefab structures clustered together, their communications uplink arrays pointed skyward, the rest of their camp’s perimeter delineated in those pylons, spaced neatly exact distances apart. Lucio dropped the drone to a few inches above the mesa hardpack and brought it in behind the largest of the structures, up the back avoiding the windows, and settled it into place on the edge of structure’s roof, cameras trained down into the camp itself.

Ana moved to join Hanzo, teacup in hand, and settled to watch. Within the relatively compact confines of the camp, technicians in khaki jumpsuits were working with obvious care among the basalt-black rocks, scanning the petroglyphs with handheld devices, taking photographs and video, neither moving nor touching anything if they could avoid it.

“I’ll be damned,” Lucio muttered. “Maybe they are doing archaeological preservation work?”

“You have to admit, we’ve seen stranger things.” Genji remarked dryly.

“But if that’s the case, why are they crawling all over the school? And why’d they interrogate Hanzo about Professor Flakes-a-Lot? And what’s the deal with those pylons? And --” Hana’s stream of questions was cut off by the sound of smashing crockery and Hanzo’s involuntary yelp of pain as Ana gripped his arm with unexpectedly fierce strength.

“Pan back,” Ana snapped over his comm.

Lucio did so and Ana’s grip tightened another degree. “Jack, Gabriel...are you seeing this?”

The pair standing together before one of the largest single petroglyph displays in the camp were not dressed like technicians. One, scrawny and unshaven and bespectacled, dark hair going gray at the temples, wore an honest-to-gods white lab coat over his cable knit sweater and gray cargo pants, hands doing as much talking as his mouth as he conversed with his companion. That companion was a solid two, maybe as much as three, heads shorter, clad in rust red coveralls and heavy hiking boots and more toolbelts and their associated attachments than seemed possible, his hugely muscled and heavily tattooed shoulders uncovered and most of his face obscured by a genuinely impressive mass of thick blonde beard and mustaches.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jack breathed over the comm, his quiet carrying the relative force of an explosion.

“Torbjörn?” Terrifying Smoke Gabe sounded frankly stunned. “But...he and Ingrid retired years ago.”

“Apparently not,” Jack replied, grimly.

“This...changes the complexion of many things.” Reinhardt said, heavily, from the door and came to lay an enormous hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“It does?” Hanzo asked. “How? Why? What does this mean?”

“Too soon to tell on some of those, kid.” Jack said into the silence that followed. “But as to what it means? That little Viking wrench-slinger there is Torbjörn Lindholm and, once upon a time, he was a member of the same UN-sponsored special ops unit as Gabe and I -- Rein and Ana, Yanaba and Nate, too. Helped us save the world a time or six. And, if he’s involved with this bunch, TALON? That likely means nothing good and we should probably figure out what it is sooner rather than later.”

#WIP Ghost Stories On Route 66

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heyymonkey2 · 7 years ago

Text

First Night Back in Fuuga Ch 30: First Night Back in Kuuto

AO3 Link to Chapter 30

Summary: Yona and Hak return to the palace together for the first time

Everything is different after the meeting with the generals.

Yona is relieved and excited. Is this really, really happening?! The exhilarating feeling radiates through her -- she truly wants to be Queen.

Though with that thought, she also feels a new weight on her shoulders. One she hopes she can bear. Serving her people is her passion and not a problem. But that’s only part of being Queen.

As she watches the generals depart with their troops for their home tribes, she keeps an eye on Geun-Tae. Soo-Won had won him over… and she knows he holds a true respect for Hak -- but she hopes she one day can win his support on her own.

Kyo-Ga has already been advocating for her, which she treasures. Though she laments the conversation he'll need to have with his little brother… that she will be the queen now and Hak the king. Perhaps Tae-Jun would be supportive of it now, but his heart surely will still sink a little.

Tae-Woo chases after Hak before taking off, looking up to him as he always has, with wonder and respect. Hak responds down to him, relieved, no longer carrying a secret from his family. Yona notices how cute Tae-Woo looks being so excited about what's going on with his idol. She wonders how rowdy the scene will be when Tae-Woo tells the rest of the Wind tribe about this. Lord Hak really is incredible.

In contrast to that excitement, Joon-Gi’s body is being taken mournfully back to Suiko by Lili and the Water troops. There will be a great funeral. And after, Yona will be tasked with appointing a new general and leader for the Water Tribe.

Then there is Joo-Doh… who will now follow Yona and Hak around as a bodyguard every step of the way back to Kuuto. Yona can’t tell if he is suspicious or prudent.

It’s not that Joo-Doh has anything against Yona and Hak specifically -- OK a few specific things against Hak -- but mainly he's a man who observes things. What exactly happened with Soo-Won is still very mysterious.

Something hasn't added up.

Aside from Joo-Doh giving Yona and Hak absolutely no privacy day or night over the weeks it takes to return to Kuuto, he also presents many political discussions. The necessities.

Like -- who will be the new royal advisor? Yona and Hak quickly agree to call for Mundok to come to the palace. There could be no one better.

Also -- how will they address Hak’s status as a fugitive? The official story still floating around is that Hak killed King Il. Would people think Hak also killed King Soo-Won? Unless they can clear Hak’s name with an adequate explanation, there will be an unpredictable number of naysayers to their union and any coronation.

Yona can’t work on devising such a story with Hak or even confide about what really happened with Soo-Won thanks to their ever-present bodyguard. She desperately desires to arrive at Hiryuu Palace so she can at last be alone with her husband.

Yet at the same time she is terrified of going back to that place. It'll be like going back to a former life. And having to face the site of that devastating, traumatic night... How could she ever step foot in the king’s chambers again?

Hak must know what she's thinking. She's been riding on her own horse, getting to show off her new skills to her favorite teacher, but he still has been reaching across to caress her back or squeeze her hand.

When she looks back at him now, there is a comforting look in his eyes... and it gives her strength.

When they at long last arrive at Kuuto and ride through the town, Yona watches her boys -- Hak, Jae-Ha, Yun, Shin-Ah, and Ao -- grab meat skewers from vendors with stars in their eyes. (Ao goes after some roasted chestnuts.)

Oh yeah, she remembers, We’re not poor anymore. I can stuff their happy bellies full of meat and delicious things. Hak and Jae-Ha can share fine alcohol. And Jae--

Yona rolls her eyes when she sees Jae-Ha, still recovering mind you, already wandering off after some beautiful young Kuuto ladies.

Yep, they are going to be very happy, I think, Yona smiles.

Hak offers Yona some skewers, but she declines. She’s felt sick most of their ride back with no appetite at all. She wonders if it's been from anxiety about returning to the palace…

Yona steps into the courtyard of Hiryuu Castle. A sorrowful gust of wind blows a strand of long crimson hair across her face. At first she feels nothing, like an empty shell. A foreigner with no connection to here. Perhaps she’d seen a picture once. Someone’s else’s life.

Then the silent tears start. She sees ghosts of Hak and Soo-Won walking across the stone expanse. Smiling, joking.

She sees a memory of her father playing out before her. Returning from the shrine. Always praying. What were you praying for, Father?

She sees a mirror of herself walking toward her now, rosy-cheeked and innocent. Made up and beautiful. Chasing after something she’d never get. Not noticing…

...Hak watching her from behind. And what’s that look in his eyes?

Present Yona turns -- and there he is. Watching her from behind. That same look in his eyes. Love.

She blushes. How could she have not seen it back then?

“This is weird,” Yona admits through her tears, “I’m feeling angry about so many things. And yet… so grateful about others.”

Hak takes her hand in his, “For what it’s worth -- in spite of everything... I feel grateful.”

Yona strokes her thumb across his rough skin, coming into contact with his wedding band. Me, too.

The tears come a little harder now. Their innocence truly gone. They grew up. Together. Overnight and through tremendous pain. But... the love that blooms out of scars runs the deepest.

As they stand facing the palace, Yona wipes her tears and lifts her countenance with determination -- they are stronger than ever now. Their past will not define their future.

The future is theirs to build together.

As soon as they enter the edifice, royal staff and medics rush to take them to baths to cleanse their bodies and clean their wounds, to dress them in fine clothes and pray over them for restored health.

At first Yona doesn’t like this -- she wants to show Jae-Ha, Yun, Shin-Ah, and Ao around her former home and their new home. She wants to know where their rooms will be. She's already started to fantasize about palace sleepovers. Wouldn’t it be fun to all sleep together again sometimes?

But then she remembers… Hak. And how a little privacy, especially tonight, might be a very good thing.

She scrubs her skin very thoroughly now, getting nice and soft while thinking about what they finally might get to do again later…

Instead of walking to dinner as she was instructed, Yona finds herself wandering the palace halls in the direction of her old room. She just wants to see…

Hak stands across from her, “This isn’t the way to dinner…”

Yona bites her lower lip and takes his hand in hers to lead him, “I’m glad I ran into you. It's better if we do this together.”

“What?” Hak is happily baffled as he follows. When they stop outside her room, he knows, “Want me to go in first?”

“I would always rush in here without a thought. Isn’t it funny how scared I am to open this door?”

Hak squeezes her hand, “I’m here.”

“Thank you. I need to face this. I guess it was weighing on me more than I thought.”

“Things you once loved tend to do that…”

Yona pushes open the door… to see her room already lit. As though someone knew she would want to come in here tonight.

She steps in, taking in the sight of everything still in its place. Preserved. Literally, not a single thing moved.

Hak comes in, too, closing the door behind them.

“You used to always stand over there,” Yona points.

“You used to always throw that at me,” Hak points to a porcelain bowl.

“Hey…” Yona laughs, “...that’s actually true. And that,” she nods at a tea set.

“I’ll watch my mouth tonight,” he considers.

Yona glances up at him, her eyes saying it all, “Don’t…”

His mouth opens a little at her insinuation then he eyes the door -- closed. Next he looks at her bed, his eyebrows rising.

Yona’s mind races with desire and realization, “Did you ever... want to sleep in my bed before?”

Hak smiles wryly, “You invited me in before.”

Yona gets giddy at what could have been going through his mind back then when she had no idea. But she has ideas now, “I’m inviting you again. Sleep with me here tonight?”

“Can tonight start right now?”

Yona is loving this, “You waited longer than I can imagine to sleep with me in that bed. I don’t think I can ask you to wait any longer.”

Their long, chaste journey paired with Yona's teases have Hak nearly panting. As he wraps an arm around her and pulls her against his body, he leans in to steal a kiss from her lips.

Yona pulls back, “Tell me something first…”

Hak's eyes are fogged with desire as he leans down and nuzzles her neck, “Anything.”

“Did you ever… touch yourself when you thought of me back then?”

Hak pulls back and smiles in disbelief, “You never stop surprising me.”

Yona blushes, “Did you…?”

He looks at her deeply, honestly, “Of course.”

Yona feels herself getting wet. Remembering how hot he was even back then and she hadn’t even paid attention to him as a man. But him thinking of her as a woman back then and stroking that glorious erection of his… Now Yona’s thighs are getting weak...

“Have you ever touched yourself while thinking about me?” he asks right back, almost afraid of her answer.

Yona turns her face in embarrassment, blushing deep red, “I didn’t ever do that back then… it wasn’t until I noticed you. Your face,” she smiles coyly up at him, then reaches up to put her fingers in his hair, “This hair. Your shoulders. Your heart. That’s the first time I wanted to touch down there.”

He starts unfastening her dress, “...did you ever?”

Yona blushes deeper, “I missed you…”

“You did...” Hak smiles triumphantly.

He looks at her pretty little hands with long, delicate fingers. He lifts her right hand and begins kissing it finger by finger, “I would’ve liked to have seen that,” then he begins to gently suck on her fingertips, which makes Yona gasp.

“Hak...” she moans as she begins to move backward toward her bed, “What you do with your hands to me down there…”

He flicks his eyes up at her in an offer.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she confesses.

And instantly the warrior from the battlefield has her back on the bed, his mouth eagerly against hers as he impossibly fast works to remove any and every piece of fabric on her body.

She in return fumbles her fingers against his robes, trying to get to that taut flesh she’s craved every night since last she had him.

“What turned you on?” Yona pants as she feels her hands up his chiseled chest.

“There are plenty of parts of you that turn me on, Yona,” Hak offers as his use of her name steals her breath, “But I’m guessing you want to hear the unwholesome parts.”

“Mmmm,” Yona moans as he feels her now-exposed breasts, “Tell me.”

He leans down and whispers into her ear, “You had a blue gown. It was the first that ever showed your cleavage. I had a very hard time that day.”

“Did you come?” she feels his hand moving down low…

“I got off three times that day just remembering the sight,” he looks wistfully over her swollen breasts, her pink nipples there for him and only him to suck and lick, nip and tease. He brings his mouth to them, then continues, “And I thought back on them often.”

Yona writhes in pleasure under him as he takes a breast in his mouth, sucking her and lapping his tongue over her nipple, “Ahhh,” it incites a pressure and a light in her core.

He slips two fingers from his other hand inside her, slipping a third back to her anus. Yona gasps again, returning to her usual loud lovemaking. Pushing her head back hard against the bedding as she fights the pleasure from consuming her, “How do you… know how to… that…”

Hak brings his mouth to hers, sweeping his tongue into a sweet dance with hers, then he pulls back to answer, “I had years dreaming up and then trying to forget every last thing I wanted to do to you.”

As his hand inside her begins to thrust, she begs, “Keep… remembering…”

His eyes are hooded with his own pleasure as he continues to work his hand in her wetness, “I was never actually able to forget.”

Yona responds louder yet, Hak is mesmerized watching her sweat and move against him. He can’t help but move his mouth down to her womanhood and begin kissing and licking her there.

Yona spreads her thighs wide to further invite him. He runs his tongue up and down her slit, then removes his hand and sticks his tongue inside her, licking up her warmth and juices. Then he brings his hand back into action and begins sucking on her nub.

Yona’s hands tremble in his messy hair as she loses herself against his mouth, screaming his name, “Hak!!”

He pulls back, in the daze of a happy dream, then drops his robes fully and climbs into bed properly, tenderly lifting her pleasure-ridden body up next to him, now fully naked as well.

He runs a hand over her soft skin as he slowly professes, “All the times you touched me… or I got to touch you. Help you onto a horse. Pull you from a fall. Redirect you away from running into someone annoying... I couldn’t shake it from my head. Days later... I still felt you.”

“That’s how I feel about you now,” Yona looks up at him wantonly.

Hak slowly, meaningfully lowers his lips to hers and takes her in a passionate, giving kiss. Then he mounts her, she spreading her legs for him. He takes a profound glance of disbelief and gratefulness at this bed, this room, then back down at this princess… after the head of his penis teases her wet entrance just enough to make her practically begging, he brings himself inside her, expanding her for him, finding her core. He leans his torso down over her, taking her mouth once more and begins thrusting.

Each motion causes Yona to gasp and then swallow her breath. Her body tense, back arched, toes curled, hands grasping desperately at his broad back. The pleasure of their friction has her mind in another world. It’s a transcendent, magical experience to be lovers and she is off in bliss with Hak, a place that is only theirs.

Hak lifts his face up so he can watch her as he thrusts into her. Watch her face roll side to side as she moans his name. He thrusts harder, watching her receive all of it. It’s incredible…

He scoops her into his arms and rolls onto his back, now with a full vantage of her. Yona puts her hands on his chest and begins riding him, throwing her head back as she moves atop.

Hak watches her pert breasts bounce and her ab muscles tighten as she rises and falls on his cock. He places his hands on her hips as she continues and can’t help but moan along with her, “Yona… Yona!”

He flips her onto her back as he finishes with a powerful thrust into her, ejaculating as her own orgasm tightens around his dick. He spills into her more and more, both of them aftershocking together.

They lay coupled together, panting, holding one another for a couple sweet moments before Hak rolls to the side and pulls a blanket over Yona.

She offers room under the blanket for him, too, “Can this be our room now?”

Hak looks at how serious she is and starts laughing… then harder and harder, almost crying he’s laughing so hard.

“What?!” she’s prepared to smack him.

With a hand to his forehead Hak finally pulls it together, “Sorry, Princess. This is... unbelievable. I keep expecting to wake up from some dream. Or find out it’s the afterlife. It’s… few deserve this much happiness, certainly not me.”

Yona snuggles up against him, “Don’t say that. But I’m happy you’re happy. I’m happy, too. The happiest I’ve ever been. Which is crazy… I never thought I’d be happy again after…”

Hak wraps a protective hand around her waist. He smiles with tears in his eyes now, “I told you before… your happiness is my greatest happiness. That will never change.”

And also not for the first time, Yona tears up at this sentiment... because she knows exactly how he feels and that they both mean it with all their hearts.

As a post-journey, post-lovemaking contented tiredness falls over them, the lovers feel skin against skin, breath in sync with breath, heartbeat against heartbeat… and naked in this moment of peace, Yona finally recognizes the strange sensation she’s recently started feeling in her breasts. A pain and swelling. This is the same as… when her breasts first began to grow. They’re… growing?

Yona gazes up at Hak’s tranquil, sleeping face as she realizes. Her sickness these past couple weeks may not have been from the journey after all...

#akatsuki no yona #fanfic #hak x yona #first night back in fuuga #lemon

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thatoneshadyshop · 8 years ago

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What is poetry like in the Isles? Is tere a form that is appreciated over others? Is the rhyme usually in beginning? End?

Ah, sweet little literary interloper, you ask about an art form that is ancient and revered among we true celebrants of culture and artistry. You are asking one to make sweeping generalisations about something that is so nuanced and intricate as to speak to the very heart and soul of an entire people; a craft that can touch the minds of inbreeds and tease stone statues to tears. Yet one will try, as best one can, to so reduce one’s ancient and vast and superior culture, all the better so you may broaden your horizons beyond the edge of the mud filled trough in which you crawl.

Poetry upon the Isles can very broadly be divided into the traditional and the modern breed. By modern breed, one means those that tend to be written to be performed, rather than read, whose impact is as much in the delivery as the form. Compared to the traditional form, these poems are much more free and loose in their form and their restrictions, and need not follow any particular scheme or pattern. Far more important is the ability of the poet, through word and though performance, to emote, and raise the feelings of others who hear their words. Truly gifted performance poets are prized among the ranks of the Artists, for their skill with both their mouths and their quills is to be celebrated twice over. One admits, one has a certain fondness for some of the performance poets - some are altogether too dramatic and self important and full of Divines awful symbolism to be properly appreciated, but some speakers can turn their work to something approximating true beauty. One recalls one woman, and one admits her name escape one, for one was young when grandmother took one to hear her speak, who performed with such a passion that her words remain fresh in one’s mind, accompanied still by the rise and fall of her voice, her dramatic motions, her tone that moved from angry indignation to pleading hope in but a breath.

Ahem. Excuse one. It has been some time since one performed.

It’s easy to be a hopeless romantic, if you want to be.On one night, you’ll run into the rain in the night,Just to see their smile.

The next rain, you’ll decide they don’t deserve it, after all.

But…

Now you can rank how worthy they are.By answering the question to yourself:But would you run into the rain for them?

You’ll never be told about howYou might make an attempt at closing down sunsetsOn a mile long beachfront,Just so you can reach their spirit in time,Long before the sun was supposed to rise again.But will you run into the rain for them?

Conversations with parents and with teachers never teach youThe you will be so willing,To fly nude through flaming coals Embellished with flames of the desert heat,Listening for permission to sing of the beat of your heart.But will you run into the rain for them?

Past the knives of ice liquid landing stone cold on your face,Past the deep, black treacherous pits of mud,Threatening to pull you down,Throwing you under, tearing your skin,Down into the dark places where fair maidens who slumberGet stepped on.But will you run into the rain for them?

Would you run into the rain,Embracing the passion of the storm,The significance of the Divine’s falling tears,Beating on your breast,Covering the wounds on yours fists as you run down the cliffs,Past red skies and blue skies too.Will you run into the rain for them?

Conversations with poets and with priests will never tell youThat you will wait for themTo love you, love you, love you!But you’ll need more!You need to be given more before you let them in!Before you cradle their soul and sing with the faith and the hopes and the possibility,

That maybe,If you run that extra mile,Past that midnight moon,Straight into the heart of the rain,Jumping over the deep black pits,Running fast, running faster, running lightning bolt fast,Past the knives of ice liquid landing stone cold on your face,Past the screaming hounds of war and the screaming orphan babes,Begging to have them take you into them,From the unbridled stone cold recklessness of the rain.

Maybe if you did all of this for them,Youcould easily close down sunsets.And maybe,Just maybe,You could reach their spirit in time,Long before the sunWas supposed to rise again.

Pah. Not one’s finest performance, one is afraid to say, but it has been some time since one last orated. Still. You get the gist, no doubt, and the impact. One has not lost so much practice as to fear that much had been missed, regardless of how small the target of your open mind may be.

Do you need a moment? One will understand if you do. There. Better? Good. One shall continue.

In the more formal tradition, there are various forms that poetry may take, and each bound by its’ own set of rules and regulations. Some of them even have names in the tongues of Men, though such short lived beings could never hope to even vaguely master the forms. Regardless. Let one see… well, there are the tezra rima forms, where the rhyming scheme is interlocked, formed of tercets of no more than ten or eleven syllables. Consider, for instance, this example:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

Other forms include the rhyme royal, whereby iambic parameter is used in verses of seven lines with a set rhyme scheme of ababbcc; or the highly structured villanelle : a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The lines can be of any length, but the form requires five tercets followed by a quatrain. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem’s two concluding lines. Though as one said, there are a myriad of different forms, each with their own masters and their own adherents.

Indeed, competition between adherents of different forms of traditional poetry can become quite heated. One recalls hearing reports of one band of poets who favoured the Rhyme Royal ransacking the salon of a poet noted for her work in the tezra rima form. Apparently, they raided her house and defaced her works of art, before proceeding to defecate in her plants and daub her walls with the blood of slain fowl. They got their comeuppance, of course, when they in turn found their gathering interrupted by a band of masked assailants wielding quill pots and paint brushes, but truly, one is wandering away from the point now somewhat.

(OOC: The poem I gave as an example of the tezra rima form is not one I came up with, rather it is Ode to the West Wind, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.)

#asks #elder scrolls #poetry #altmer #altmeri culture #summerset isles

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solivar · 7 years ago

Text

WIP: Ghost Stories On Route 66

aka the one where Hanzo Shimada is an expatriate art student, Jesse McCree is an NPS ranger, both are more than they seem, weird stuff is going down in the New Mexican desert, and their lives collide in the middle of it.

Did someone order pain-but-not-death? We’re getting there.

My family tells an ancient legend of two dragon brothers: Minamikaze, the Dragon of the South Wind, and Kitakaze, the Dragon of the North Wind. Together they ruled the skies with might and wisdom, governed the courts of the seasons, and upheld balance and harmony in the heavens.

But they were also brothers and, as all brothers do, sometimes they squabbled about matters both great and petty. Minamikaze was strong and wise and proud of his many gifts and virtues, the beauty of his palace in the heavens, the quality of his courtiers and the elegance of his concubines. Kitakaze was fierce and cunning and proud of his many skills and his independence, of the wild beauty of the mountains where he rested his heavy coils, of the equally wild spirits who worshipped him as he deemed fit. From time to time, Kitakaze would call upon his brother in his high palace among the clouds and, whenever he came, Minamikaze’s many courtiers would flutter through the halls in his wake, whisper and hiss behind their fans that they could hardly believe such a crude and unrefined being could truly be the brother of their master much less a rightful ruler of the heavens. From time to time, Minamikaze would call upon his brother among the mountains he called home and, whenever he came, the spirits who served Kitakaze would whisper and hiss through the branches of the trees that they could hardly believe such an arrogant and waspish creature could truly be the brother of their master much less a rightful ruler of the heavens. Thusly did many years pass, with each brother ruling his half of their kingdom while those closest to them dripped poison into their ears.

Even our clan does not preserve how the worst and final quarrel between them began, but we do know its cause: which of them could better rule over their land, a kingdom whole and undivided. No one knows who struck the first blow but we do know this: their resentment of one another turned to murderous rage and their violent struggle darkened the skies. Typhoons lashed the seas and flooded the shores, capsizing boats and drowning fishermen, starving those who waited for their return. Blizzards howled among the mountains, burying villages in avalanche and withering crops in unseasonable cold, so that famine stalked all the land. Lightning fell upon temples and shrines, palaces and farmhouses, and the fires that followed added to the woes of those suffering in the shadow of the raging brothers. In the end, the Dragon of the South Wind struck down his brother, who fell to the tortured Earth, shattering the land in the throes of his death.

Minamikaze had triumphed but, as time passed, he realized the extent of his folly and the sweetness of victory turned to ash. The obsequies of his courtiers, no matter how delicious, could not take the place of his brother’s openhearted companionship. He knew too late that his heart had been poisoned by their lies and their slander and had only his own hand to blame for the murder of the one who had always known and loved him best. Burning with shame, he fled his palace in the heavens and wandered aimlessly in bitterness and sorrow, his grief throwing the whole of the world into discord.

One day a stranger, clad in the cloak of a wandering monk, called up to him as he wept in the skies above the mountain-cradled lake his brother called home and asked, “Dragon lord, why are you so distraught?”

And Minamikaze replied, “Seeking power, I killed my brother -- but, without him, I am lost.”

The stranger replied, his voice gentle with compassion and soft with comfort, “You have inflicted wounds upon yourself, but now you must heal. Walk the Earth on two feet, as I do. Find value in humility and in humanity, and then you will find peace.”

Minamikaze heard the kindness and the wisdom in the stranger’s words, and knelt upon the ground at his feet. For the first time, he was able to clearly see the world around him, the consequences of his own actions, and seeing he knew what he must do: he became human. The stranger revealed himself as Kitakaze, fallen no longer and healed of many wounds, the most terrible of which was the loss of his brother’s love, made whole by the hand that inflicted it. Reunited, the two set out to rebuild what they had once destroyed, make right what they had once put wrong.

“And to make a much longer story filled with an absolutely incredible number of begats short,” Genji interjected, “about the time Minamikaze and Kitakaze started tooling around on two legs, they also came to the realization that there was a lot to be said for engaging in semi-divine-being with benefits relationships.”

“Genji.” Hanzo growled in what he hoped was a properly quelling tone.

“Which is, in fact, how they came to be married to the shaman sisters who had scraped Kitakaze out of the crater he’d made on impact and stitched him back together again.” Genji continued, not obviously quelled at all, and it was all Hanzo could do not to put him in a headlock until someone could get a roll of duct tape. “Nature took its course and, well.”

“The children of Minamikaze and Sakuya, Kitakaze and Tsuya, were the founders of our clan, born of the union between two worlds.” Hanzo grabbed his brother’s knee under the table, found the pressure points, and applied a judicious amount of force; Genji’s mouth, finally getting the hint, snapped shut. “They were...not entirely human themselves, being able to walk between the courts of the spirit world and the realms of men, the better to carry out their parents’ will. The brothers had inflicted great harm on all the worlds in their violence but they were wise enough to know that undoing all that they had done was not only their own task but the work of generations yet to be born. Minamikaze and Kitakaze lived long lives but their human shells were still mortal and when they passed from it within hours of each other, they were born again into their true kingdom as the dragon princes they were. Thus did they give their children, and their grandchildren, and all who would come into the world bearing the humble name they chose for themselves a mighty gift to aid them in their struggles -- not only the blood of dragons in their veins, but a companion of the spirit to protect and counsel them.”

The ranger’s grip on his hand tightened a fraction; he could only imagine how badly he was failing to control his expression because, when he spoke, his tone was surpassingly gentle. “That’s what this was supposed to be.”

It took Hanzo a moment to force his tongue to move. “Yes.”

“Wait.” Hana said at the same moment Lucio whispered, “Holy mother of no way.”

Genji sighed and nodded. “Yeah, it’s exactly what you’re thinking.”

“That tattoo. On your back. Is an actual dragon.” Lucio sounded as though he were saying the words aloud in a desperate, doomed effort to make himself not believe them.

“Yep.” Genji replied. “You can let go of my leg now, Hanzo.”

He did so, and wrapped the liberated arm around his slowly churning stomach.

“I’d say no freaking way but I’m afraid we’ve left that pretty far behind.” Lucio admitted. “Can we see it?”

“...Maybe?” Genji flicked a look at him out of the corner of his eye. “Later. Definitely later.”

“So,” Terrifying Smoke Monster Dad asked, because of course he did, “why don’t you have one?”

“Gabe.” Ranger McCree growled in a near-duplicate of his own quelling tone; Genji just growled.

“No. He has a salient point. I was vulnerable because there was no bond, though I was prepared -- “ Hanzo stopped, considered, started again. “For hundreds of years, our family followed the command of our ancestors and carried out the task of repairing the harm they had done. Using the gifts at our command, we advised and counseled rulers and warlords, we kept the shrines of our ancestors and those gods and spirits who acted in accord with them, we fought the monsters and demons their violence had permitted entry into the world, and we gave peace and rest to the anguished ghosts of those who perished during the dark and troubled years. Our family was respected and honored for our work, and for our skills, and for our gifts. But things, as they always do, changed.”

“More specifically, the arts our family practiced were outlawed as superstition and banned under threat of a number of unpleasant punishments. When given the choice between sinking into genteel poverty and irrelevance and outlawry our several-times-great-grandparents chose outlawry. They might have been a tiny bit bitter.” Genji’s tone was decidedly wry. “Unfortunately, transitioning from well-respected clan of craftspeople, to use the local term, to a greatly feared clan of organized criminals had a rather significant side-effect. We fell out of favor with our own ancestors.”

“For nearly three centuries our dragon-kin would not answer us. They refused our prayers, turned away our offerings, ignored our pleas. We still etched an open bond into our skin in the hope that it would one day be fulfilled, but it never was. Parts of the family ceased to believe that we had ever been dragons at all while others used the tales for intimidation and threat.” Hanzo fixed his gaze at a point on the far wall, letting his eyes trace the pattern of the hanging, not wishing to meet the ranger’s eyes and see what was written there. “This might have gone on until the last of the dragon’s blood drained from us entirely, had it not been for our grandfather and his brother. Uncle Toshiro was of a scholarly and spiritual nature, and when he asked his brother our grandfather to release him from his obligations to the clan that he might pursue a sacred calling, he was permitted to go. Kijuro, our grandfather, knew he would never be happy otherwise and he loved his brother enough to grant him his freedom. Toshiro withdrew into the mountains near Hanamura, the city our clan called home, and rediscovered the ways we had lost in the shrine that had once been ours, at the knee of the hermit shaman who tended it. And he was the first to receive an answer from our ancestors in generations. The message he received was this: the world was breaking again and it would need dragons, as well, to protect and restore it.”

“Our grandfather wasn’t what you could call overly well-supplied with imagination but he knew what that meant well enough: our ancestors wanted us to go straight. Fortunately for them, Grandpa Kijuro pretty much wanted to get out of the organized crime business while the getting was good, too, and he went about the task of sweet-talking the elder siblings and the heads of the sub-families and figuring out which assets to convert to legitimate businesses and which to sell off and to whom and who to put in charge of what. It was pretty much the work of his most vigorous years, it wasn’t easy or smooth or completely without pain and violence, but he inculcated the necessity of it in all his potential heirs and into his only child, our mother.” Genji said our mother like some people might say Satan himself but Hanzo elected to let it ride unremarked. “He was practically on his deathbed when Toshiro sent word that the ancestors had accepted his efforts and that his daughter was even then carrying the child who would bring the dragons back to the Shimada clan.”

“You?” Ana asked.

“Him.”

“Our grandfather died four years after I was born. Genji was only a baby at the time.” Hanzo’s gaze did another circuit of the pattern, seeking calm, emptiness, emotional distance. “Uncle Toshiro came down from the mountains for the funeral and to take me in hand, to begin training me in the arts I would need to master. He was younger than our grandfather by some years but was an old man himself, and I think he knew even then that I would be his last student. I could already perceive the world beyond the world -- the spirit of Shimada Castle was a sad and beautiful woman who would sit by me at night and sing me to sleep when I was restless, the gardens and the city were alive with things only I could see or touch. What I had been given as a gift, he had gained through study and discipline, which he shared with me.”

“Which is to say when he wasn’t studying a rigorous schedule of way-above-average academics with the best private tutors our mother could find, he was studying weirdass magical and religious esoterica with our ancient, crusty great-uncle. When he wasn’t practicing the sword -- with actual swords, mind you, not kendo -- was practicing the bow, and when he wasn’t practicing either of those two things he was working on his calligraphy or how to make six dozen different kinds of demon-chasing charms or learning how to paint sumi-e well enough to get into art college or how to sing troubled spirits to rest or approximately six million other things that he was expected to know how to do perfectly before he could approach the dragon brothers’ shrine and beg their forgiveness and ask them to come back.” Genji made no effort to keep either the exasperation or the bitterness out of his tone. “I was thoroughly convinced for at least a couple years that he was actually a vampire because I almost never saw his face in broad daylight and I thought our parents were keeping the terrible truth from me until I was old enough to deal with it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hana opening her mouth. “For the record: I am also not a vampire. I am...not anything.”

“That seems kinda unlikely, darlin’.” The ranger’s tone was gentle.

“And yet it is the truth.” He was mildly astonished that his voice wavered only slightly. “Uncle Toshiro was very, very old when he passed -- I was twenty-one. Shortly after his funeral, I received word from the keeper of the dragon brothers’ shrine that everyone enclosed there had dreamed of our coming…”

They were not quite fifty yards from the parking lot at the base of the mountain when Genji started complaining.

“How could you do this to me, Hanzo?” He asked in the plaintive tones of a man most cruelly and brutally wronged by one held dear to his heart. “How?”

“You’ll survive the cardio.” Hanzo replied, utterly without mercy, as he started up the next flight of steps on the long climb to the shrine. “You should probably also save your breath. The air is going to be a bit thin where we’re going.”

“Heartless,” Genji whined. “Absolutely heartless. Do you have any idea where I could be right now?”

“No,” Hanzo lied and lengthened his stride slightly. “ Though I’m certain you’re going to tell me.”

“I could be on a yacht in the middle of the wine-dark Adriatic Sea -- “ Genji began in tones of high melodrama.

“Aegean. I’m reasonably certain it’s the Aegean that all the Greek poets describe as ‘wine-dark’.” Hanzo observed meditatively because he, at least, hadn’t slept through either World Cultures or Advanced Poetic Forms In World Literature.

“Whatever. And not just any yacht, the world’s largest, most expensive yacht -- the yacht has its own private plane, Hanzo. It’s practically an aircraft carrier upholstered in nudity and excess. And do you know to whom that yacht belongs, oh my dearest brother?” He could nearly hear the gesticulations accompanying the recitation, though he didn’t look back to witness them.

He also knew the answer that question. “Oh your only brother. And, no, I do not.”

“Kyrion and Konstancia Nagata, that’s who!” Genji howled, his despair echoing down the valley. “Who are turning eighteen this weekend! I could be the meat in a kinky Nagata twin sandwich right now!”

“Genji,” Hanzo replied, repressively, because otherwise he was going to start laughing and that would completely ruin any attempt at wise brotherly counsel, “Kyrion Nagata is completely not your type -- “

“Maybe not but his sister is!” Genji wailed again, the ancient, weathered torii lining the ancient, weathered stone stairs catching his voice and amplifying it. “Have you ever even seen her on the dance floor? She moves like bones and ligaments are completely optional flexion devices and those legs Hanzo those legs and how do you even know Kyrion Nagata?”

“I actually read the briefings the security office puts out.” Hanzo rolled his eyes heavenward. “Which is how I know that their father is balls deep in the Russian mafia and underwater in debt to a number of mainland Chinese smuggling operations and that is likely why either or both of his children are attempting to ensnare one or more heirs to a family-run zaibatsu -- because we wouldn’t let our in-laws be murdered by testy smugglers who want their investments back.”

“Oh, sure, take all the fun out of the idea of a threesome with unnaturally flexible twins.” Genji sulked in a transport of despond. “I handle my own contraceptives and prophylactics, you know.”

“I’m reasonably certain a very polite and well-mannered kidnapping for ransom would also not be beyond the bounds of possibility, particularly if they spend the the entire duration of it fucking your brains out.” Hanzo replied, tartly. “Oh, and for the record: mother asked me not to leave you alone with either of them for longer than fifteen seconds if it was within my power to do so and look! It was totally within my power this weekend.”

“Dammit, Hanzo!”

They walked in silence for some time after that, partly because Genji, resentfully fuming, refused to allow himself to be baited into further conversation, partly because the trail itself became genuinely steep enough to constitute a vigorous cardio workout. The steps were old beyond the telling of it, carved out of the bones of the mountain, worn as much by time as the passage of feet, crumbling in some places and slick with moss in others. They both had to apply some concentration to their footing lest they enjoy a far less controlled descent and by the time they reached the point where the trail widened out along the brow of the mountainside, both were more than a little ready for a rest stop.

“You’ll survive the cardio, huh?” Genji asked, half-mocking, as they both shucked off their packs and slumped down in the lee of an enormous boulder, fighting to catch their collective breath.

“I’m reasonably sure that was why Uncle Toshiro decided to just stay in Hanamura.” Hanzo admitted, rolling the tension out of his shoulders as he set down his pack. “Here, lay out the blanket…”

Genji, for a pleasant change, did as he was asked without argument, spreading out the plastic-lined picnic blanket liberated from the cherry blossom viewing party supplies on the flattest part of the trail and then flopping dramatically down on it. Hanzo extracted the food he’d packed for the hike, deposited Genji’s share on his chest, and settled down at his knee. “Let me have your legs.”

Genji looked up from the contents of his lunch box but didn’t argue, particularly once Hanzo was massaging the lactic acid buildup out of his calves. “Ohhhhh, I knew there was a reason I still liked you even though you do stuff like this to me.”

“You used to enjoy doing stuff like this with me.” He switched legs and rolled his eyes a little at his brother’s orgiastic moaning.

“Yeah, when I was twelve and you were only allowed outside if you were doing something that involved hopping one legged across the obstacle course or walking blindfolded through a forest with only a water bottle and a knife or hiking up the side of a mountain without any marked trails and an eighty pound backpack.” Genji replied around a mouthful of onigiri. “I’m not twelve anymore, Hanzo.”

“Clearly.” Hanzo replied dryly and poured himself a cup of tea from the thermos. “You’re attracting curious spirits with the power of your abs, by the way, close your shirt.”

“Let them get an eyeful, it’s a glory they’ll never see again once this weekend is over.” Genji propped himself up on his elbows and accepted the cup handed to him. “You could have had any dozen or two of our ass-sucking relatives up here with you right now, you know.”

“I know.” Hanzo contemplated the contents of his own box, all of which had seemed quite appetizing only a handful of hours before. “And if I’d wanted my ass sucked all the way there and back again, I would have asked one of them.”

“Of course it’s much more enjoyable to torture me.” Genji tossed off his tea and lay back again, twitching his legs out of his lap.

Hanzo discovered his appetite taking an abrupt and total leave, and closed his box. “You could have said no, and I would have respected that.”

“But mother wouldn’t have and, honestly, even dragging myself up the side of a mountain and spending the weekend in a place without wifi or running water is preferable to putting up with her in full blown passive-aggressive dragon-mama mode.” Genji pulled out his phone. “Holy shit, I’ve still got connection. Who would’ve guessed?”

“I’m reasonably certain they’ve got running water now.” Hanzo replied, carefully stretching his own legs before the post-exertion cramps could set in.

Genji snorted and looked up from the screen. “Good, because standing under a waterfall is absolutely not going to cut it when it comes to bathing tonight. Why did you even ask me, you knew I was going to hate everything about this. Honestly, Hanzo.”

Hanzo stretched the length of his left leg and addressed his words to the blanket. “Because you’re my brother and, no matter what happens in the next few days, after this everything is going to be different, one way or another.”

Genji was silent for a long, long moment. Hanzo closed his eyes and concentrated on the sensation of his muscles loosening, the birds twittering among the trees, the rustle of small forest creatures in the undergrowth beyond the trail, the spirits singing their wordless songs on the breeze as it curled around the shoulder of the mountain. Then, in a tone positively freighted with malicious glee, Genji whispered, “You’re afraid.”

Hanzo sat up so quickly his hamstrings complained. “Really?”

Genji pointed at him and outright cackled in perfectly spiteful amusement. “You are. Hanzo Perfect In Every Way Shimada is fucking scared. I never thought I would live to see this day, never in a million years, hold still, I need to commemorate this moment -- “

Hanzo lunged at him but, as it turned out, Genji was just a hair faster and more flexible and rolled easily out of reach and to his feet.

“Dammit, Genji.” Hanzo growled and his brother laughed again, not even pretending to hide the mocking edge to it.

“Now that sounds familiar.” Genji snapped off at least a few pictures and tucked his phone away, eyes alight with venomous cheer. “Now I will always remember the day my excellent-in-all-things elder brother displayed a fleeting trace element of imperfection. My life is complete.” His grin slipped back a notch from punchable to merely annoying. “Okay, aniki, that was the best laugh I’ve had in ages so when this whole thing turns out to be the longest long con Uncle Toshiro and Grandpa ever ran, I promise I won’t make fun of you too hard, okay?”

Hanzo closed his eyes, breathed in peace, breathed out the desire to shove his complete asshole little brother off the side of the scenic overlook, and said, “We should go. We have a few more hours of walking left and I would like to be at the shrine well before nightfall.”

“But of course.”

Genji went to collect his pack and remained in an obnoxiously cheerful good mood for the remainder of the hike, undimmed by the sudden summer squall that came pouring down the valley that soaked them both before they could reach the travelers’ shelter at the base of the final rise, or the steep final climb itself. Hanzo chose to regard that as a blessing instead of a harbinger of worse to come primarily because his digestive tract had already tied itself into an impressively complex knotwork sequence and he rather doubted he could survive his circulatory system getting into the act. The sun was a handspan above the western ridge of the mountains by the time they reached the last set of stairs cut into the edge of the wooded plateau holding the dragon brothers’ shrine and found the priestess-shaman that kept it waiting for them at the top, beneath the torii that marked the boundary between the world as they knew it and the world that was yet to come.

She was almost impossibly tiny, her hair pure white and knotted into a bun at the base of her skull, her back deeply bowed and her face deeply lined with age, but the eyes that looked out at them were bright, a shade of brown so pale they were nearly golden, like those of their mother and late grandfather, sharp and knowing. She bowed in greeting as they came to the top of the steps, the westering sunlight gilding her hair, the sculpted wooden cap of the staff she leaned on, the almost impossibly snowy whiteness of her robe and shawl. “Welcome, young masters. It has been many years since the heirs of my clan have made this pilgrimage. We are pleased to receive you.”

Hanzo stopped on the topmost step and bowed deeply over his hands. “It was our honor to make this journey and our honor to pass the gate of the gods, to return the service of the clan to our ancestors.” He rose, and smiled. “It is good to finally meet you, great-grandmother.”

“Ah, child.” She reached up and cupped his cheek, the skin of her palm paper-fine. “Let me look at you. Toshiro told me a great deal about you -- “ The tip of her staff came around and struck Genji’s shins with serpentine speed; he yelped and almost tumbled back down the stairs and Hanzo just barely managed to swallow a laugh, “and also about you, Genji. Come, the girl who helps me will be making supper soon and you two should settle in…”

She set off on the path that led along the perimeter fence, away from the central lane to the shrine itself. There, tucked away in a corner and screened from view by its own fence and a thin stand of bamboo, was her elegant little house and garden, the stone path leading to the covered verandah passing through it. As the approached, the door slid open and their grandmother’s attendant -- a woman likely old enough to be their mother -- greeted them with a bow and helped her inside. “Girl, show my grandsons to their room and to the bathhouse. Grandsons, bathe. You smell like you just climbed a mountain. Then come talk to me and we will eat.”

#WIP Ghost Stories On Route 66 #Great Grandmother Sumiko is a menace

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solivar · 7 years ago

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WIP: Ghost Stories On Route 66

aka the one where Hanzo Shimada is an expatriate art student, Jesse McCree is an NPS ranger, both are more than they appear, there’s something weird going down in the New Mexican desert, and their lives collide in the middle of it.

In which Hanzo attempts to pay a visit to his relatives...you know, the other ones. I’ll fix all the italics in the morning.